Image-based navigation has become popular. In one type of system, a computer displays to a user photographic images taken in a real-world locality. The user navigates through a representation of the depicted locality by changing his virtual location or by “turning his head.” The computer keeps up with the user's navigation and displays photographic images taken from the real-world locality that represent the user's current point of view. Thus, the user is given a virtual, visual tour of the real-world locality. One system for performing this kind of feature is disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/796,789, filed on Apr. 30, 2007, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein.
An image dataset may lie behind the navigation application. The images used for this application are collected by a set of one or more cameras carried through the locality. The camera may be mounted on a vehicle or carried by a person on foot. The cameras take pictures (or video) in all directions as the vehicle or person moves. Because numerous, overlapping pictures are taken from several points of view, the set of pictures can be post-processed to create seamless 360-degree images, as disclosed in Ser. No. 11/796,789. These images are correlated with real-world geography, for example by gathering GPS data at the same time as the pictures are taken.
Sometimes a user's attention is drawn to one particular “object-of-interest” when he navigates the locality depicted in an image dataset. For example, the user may be an architect assessing the visual impact of a structure (already in place or only planned) on the neighborhood. To help the user view his object-of-interest from as many angles as possible, a “multi-angle object-of-interest video” can be created. This video is created by traveling around the neighborhood while training a video camera on the object-of-interest. (If the structure is only virtual, then the camera is focused on the proposed location of the structure. Afterwards, known computer-animation techniques are used to insert the proposed structure into the video.) This type of video requires a good deal of time and expertise to create and, once created, the resulting video is inflexible and is applicable only to the object-of-interest specified before the video was made.